{"id":1015,"date":"2013-12-22T14:02:52","date_gmt":"2013-12-22T14:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/?p=1015"},"modified":"2013-12-22T14:02:52","modified_gmt":"2013-12-22T14:02:52","slug":"lazy-phrases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/2013\/12\/22\/lazy-phrases\/","title":{"rendered":"Lazy phrases"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Who<\/a>

Who needs passive phrases?<\/p><\/div>\n

Kan du tale dansk?<\/strong> (\u201dCan you speak Danish?\u201d) Danish and English are related languages. As your study of Danish progresses, you\u2019ll see that there are a lot of things that you already \u201dkind of know\u201d when it comes to grammar and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the language does have at least one grammatical feature that does not exist in English: the passive verb form.<\/p>\n

Instead of saying Jeg drikker vandet<\/strong> (I\u2019m drinking the water), you could go for Vandet drikkes<\/strong> (the water is being drunk). As you can see, such passive forms are very easy to create \u2013 you simply take the -r<\/strong> of the present tense and replace it with an -s<\/strong>:
\nVi maler huset<\/strong> (We\u2019re painting the house) > Huset males<\/strong> (The house is being painted)
\nPostbuddet udbringer pakken personligt<\/strong> (The postman will deliver the parcel in person) > Pakken udbringes personligt<\/strong> (The parcel will be delivered in person).<\/p>\n

The \u201dpassive -s\u201d is the ultimate way of obscuring the persons responsible for doing something. You CAN say Huset males af os<\/span><\/strong> (The house is being painted by us<\/span>) \u2013 in most occasions, though, the active person is simply not being mentioned.<\/p>\n

\u201dPassive -s\u201d constructions are a bit formal and are mostly used in the written language. In the spoken language, there is a more common way of stealing the stage from the ones in charge of the action:
\n1. Pick your tense-of-choice of the verb at blive<\/strong><\/a> (to become).
\n2. Combine it with the \u201dhave\u201d form (past perfect) of the verb you want to passivize.
\nSince past perfect of at k\u00f8re<\/strong> (to drive) is har k\u00f8rt<\/strong> (have driven), Vi blev k\u00f8rt hele vejen hjem<\/strong> (af taxamanden)<\/strong> means \u201dWe were driven all the way home (by the taxi driver)\u201d (\u201dWe got a lift\/ride\u2026\u201d). Sprog bliver l\u00e6rt<\/strong> (languages are [being] learnt). Problemer bliver l\u00f8st<\/strong> (problems are [being] solved). Got it? \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t really need passive verbs to communicate. Ordinary, active phrases should do the job perfectly fine. Yet as you get acquainted with Danes, you\u2019re bound to notice a few of those -s\u2019s:<\/p>\n

Hvorn\u00e5r ses vi igen?<\/strong> (When do we see each other again?)
\nVi m\u00f8des klokken fire.<\/strong> (We\u2019ll meet [each other] at 4 o\u2019 clock.)<\/p>\n

In these cases, the job of the letter is not to passivize anything. Instead, it adds the notion of reciprocity (\u201deach other\u201d) to the verb.<\/p>\n

Vi tales ved!<\/strong> (Talk to you later!, literally: We\u2019ll talk with each other!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

Kan du tale dansk? (\u201dCan you speak Danish?\u201d) Danish and English are related languages. As your study of Danish progresses, you\u2019ll see that there are a lot of things that you already \u201dkind of know\u201d when it comes to grammar and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the language does have at least one grammatical feature that does not…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":1017,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8305,293306,11828],"class_list":["post-1015","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-grammar","tag-passive","tag-reciprocity","tag-s"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1015"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1019,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015\/revisions\/1019"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}